


whose inception?

by brinecryptexodus



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: BDSM, Blow Jobs, Dominance, Dominance/submission, Dreamsharing, F/M, Handcuffs, Porn With Plot, Submission, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-25 04:28:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22130107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brinecryptexodus/pseuds/brinecryptexodus
Summary: Dreams have an incredible power, but Dom and Arthur and the rest are always thinking about information, codes, money. You've known it was different since the first moment you did dream share. Dreams are stranger, deeper than all that. They're visceral and erotic. So when you took the Fischer job you knew it wasn't just about the money or about Dom's sad obsessions. It was a chance to discover something.But things went wrong on the first dream. Fischer's subconscious was trained, “weaponized,” and in the confusion of the first attack you got separated from the others. It was supposed to be Fischer tied up in a basement, but it turned out to be you, and even though it's just a dream it's turning into a nightmare. And that's when he walks in. Fischer himself. Smiling, confident, in control. Not confused the way an extraction target should be.“We're changing the game, Ariadne,” he says with a smile, loosening one of his cufflinks. “Are you ready?”
Relationships: Ariadne/Robert Fischer, Robert Fischer/You
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	1. whose inception?

_ It's all a dream, _ you tell yourself.  _ I'm not really here. I'm on the plane with Dom and Arthur and Eames and the rest. I'm asleep. And in a few hours, no matter what else happens, I'll wake up. _

But dream or not, it feels real. You learned that the hard way in one of your first dreams with Dom, when Mal walked up and stabbed you. Even the memory of it is enough to make you cringe, the sharp metal piercing into your stomach. It felt real. As real as the handcuffs nearly biting into your wrists that have you chained to an old sink pipe. As real as the cold concrete you're sitting on. As real as the slab-faced men with automatic rifles staring down at you in this dingy warehouse basement.

What was it Dom said before you got separated? Fischer had been  _ trained _ , his subconscious weaponized by an extractor. A good one. Your first instinct would have been to let yourself get killed, to wake up on the plane, to leave the trained crew to figure all this mess out. You just came for the creation of it all, the raw untapped power of the dreaming mind, not for heists and corporate espionage. But there was a problem. When the team had been pinned down, Dom had confessed something.

"We're too deeply sedated," he had told you urgently. "You can't just wake up. If you get shot, you'll drop into limbo. Who knows how long you'll stay down there. We have to get out of here."

And then the security men had overrun the position. Dom, and Arthur, and Eames had hurried off, but you'd tripped and fallen, and the men had gotten Fischer, and worse, you.

But some of it just didn't make sense. Why had they bothered to capture you at all? Why had they bothered to capture Fischer? Arthur had told you something about subconscious security. The subconscious would attack both the dreamer and any invaders. Kill them in the dream, wake them up in real life. But these guys were different. They weren't like Dom said, a bunch of "white blood cells" instinctively attacking an infection. They were almost cunning.

As you look into the eyes of your two guards, there's some glimmer of Fischer's piercing stare in them, some shadow of his sharp blue eyes that you cannot help but remember from the plane. So striking. Almost off-putting.

You hold onto the chain that links your cuffs and gently adjust your body, feeling your hands slick with a nervous sweat. And then you hear them coming.

Footsteps down the hall, and then Fischer walks in, cool and composed. He's changed out of his wet suit and looks every bit in command of himself. At his shoulder is a woman, short, almost shocking red hair and full lips. She looks at you, bemused, and comes to a halt a few feet behind Fischer as he steps into the room.

At first he doesn't look at you, turning to face one of the grimy windows. He smiles, glancing around the room.

"It's a good piece of work, Ariadne," he says after a moment.

You swallow and look a question at him. His blue eyes glance over at you for just a moment, and then back around the surroundings. He gestures with one hand, making a loop, taking it all in.

"This. It's a good dream. Very real," he says. "I like the little touches. The faint smell of mildew and chemicals, the …"

He pauses, reaching out a hand and running two delicate fingers along the window, pulling them away and inspecting them, "The grease, the grime. It's almost cinematic. Even though I know it's not real, it's even, hmmmm. Intimidating."

You bite your lower lip and furrow your brow a little.

"I wonder, actually," he muses to himself, rubbing the grease between his fingers and then cleaning them off on a handkerchief from his breast pocket. Then he turns to face you, walking casually to within a few feet of you. He hunkers down, squatting so that he's at eye level.

"I wonder. Have you made such a good dream, that … even though it's  _ your dream _ , even though you know it backwards and forwards, it's scaring  _ you _ ?"

His sharp blue eyes search yours, and you find that you have to look away almost immediately. But you see him smile out of your peripheral vision.

"So. Extraction. What are you here for, Ariadne?" he asks.

The woman behind Fischer clears her throat. Fischer's eyes linger on you for half a second, and you can't meet his gaze. But then he looks over his shoulder at the woman.

Her red hair is short, and she's wearing a fashionable pantsuit and heels. There's something about her eyes that have even more a feel of Fischer's, as if some part of him is looking out through her.

"I don't think," she says, her husky voice wry, rising with amusement and curiosity, "That this is extraction, Robert."

You feel a chill in the pit of your stomach. Who is this woman? How could she know? How could she be in the dream? Did the flight attendant sell out the team? Did Fischer know that they were going to try.

"Well, if it's not extraction, Ms. Charles," Fischer asks, opening his hands, "What are we looking at? Surely not a pleasure cruise through my mind."

The woman—Ms. Charles?—walks slowly across the room towards you, her hips rolling, her heels clicking with a soft echo as she draws closer. In a few seconds she's standing over the two of you, looking down into your eyes.

There's no mistaking it. Some part of Fischer's intelligence. But where his is sharp, almost intolerable in its intensity, her is softer, almost inviting; a curiosity and animation to her eyes that makes you want to tell her your secrets rather than shy away.

She smiles down at you, half in sympathy, half amused.

"Inception," she says, and turns to Fischer raising her eyebrows with surprise and some delight.

Fischer furrows his brow, frowning. He looks from Ms. Charles over to you, and  _ that stare _ . There's menace behind it, and hunger.

"Inception," he repeats. He pauses, still staring at you, and then he reaches out with that fine-fingered hand to grab your chin so that you  _ have _ to look into his eyes. And those eyes search you. You're sure he'll see confirmation of Ms. Charles' guess. You squirm and stammer.

"I-i-i'm sorry, Mr. Fischer.  _ Please _ . I'm just a kid. They just wanted me for the mazes. I don't even really know what inception  _ is _ . I wasn't even supposed to be inside the dream! I just came because one of the team, he needed help …"

You trail off, because the stare doesn't change. Fischer's frown is firm. He lets go of your chin and he stands up.

"You don't really know what it is, Ariadne, but you were willing to dive into someone's mind to try to do it?" he asks sternly, folding his arms in front of him. "you were willing to help these  _ men _ do it to me?"

You swallow, but it feels dry in your throat. Fischer isn't looking at you, but Ms. Charles is, with that smile half of pity and half of amusement.

"Inception is about control, Ariadne. It's about reforming the mind of its victim. About making someone into a totally different person. And your  _ team _ was just going to waltz into my mind and turn everything upside down? Change my whole person?"

"Listen," you blurt, your hands cold and slick, "I didn't know. I didn't understand."

"Your ignorance is hardly any excuse, Ariadne, for participating in a plot to rob me of myself," Fischer says, staring up at the grimy windows again.

You feel a tear slipping down your cheek and you nod, "Okay. Please, you've caught me. You've caught us. Just—just don't hurt me. Ride out the dream, have us arrested. Whatever you want. Just don't hurt me in here …"

Ms. Charles chuckles at that and shakes her head, as if at some joke you don't yet understand.

"Hurt you?" Fischer scoffs. He shakes his head, "You and your crew really are amateurs, aren't you. Realistic dreams. Dreams that can be mistaken for reality. The threat of pain. Death. What a bunch of thugs. You could do the same thing of your victim was awake."

Fischer turns to look at you again. "I'm not going to  _ hurt you _ , Ariadne. I'm going to do to you, what you planned to do to me. Make your mind mine."

"Plant an idea," Ms. Charles explains. "a simple one. One that you'll think is yours. And plant it so deep," she says, reaching down to brush away your tears, "that it will take hold of you. Redefine you. Make you into a whole new person …"

"Wh-wh-what?" you stammer, a bit of panic edging into your voice. "What kind of an idea?"

Fischer walks over to you, but this time he doesn't squat down. He looks down at you from above, his face stern. And then his eyes begin to study you. Your own eyes, fearful, your lips, trembling, and your body, small and lithe, all bundled up in colorful autumn hued layers. After a long moment, he smiles.

"A simple idea is the best idea," he says aloud.

Ms. Charles nods, smiling approvingly.

Fischer puts his hand on his chin, crossing his other arm, "Something  _ powerful _ , though. Surreal, but with strong enough notice force to the waking psyche that it could shape … everything about you."

Ms. Charles reaches up and scratches delicately at the nape of her neck, "And what's more surreal, more powerful in waking life and the dream state than …"

Fischer smiles down at you, and opens up the hand that was holding his chin, as if he's just had an idea, "Sex."

"I'll make you mine. My devoted plaything," Fischer says slowly. He reaches down, running his fingers across your hairline, and it feels electric. Terrifying, but powerful, and your head swims a little, and your body feels suddenly warm. Tears spill out of your eyes, "I'll make you  _ obsessed _ with my pleasure. That will be the purpose of your mind, your body, even your heart."

"She  _ is _ beautiful, Robert. And that mind," Ms. Charles says, gesturing around at the dream you built, "So much potential. So much imagination."

Your voice breaking a little as you cry, you summon up some courage. You frown up at him and shake your head, "Well, you  _ can't _ ."

You smile weakly, confident that, whatever he does to you, if you can ride out this layer of the dream for just an hour or two more, you'll wake up, you'll be out of his hands—at least your mind will.

"You can't," you repeat around your weak smile, "because I  _ know _ I'm dreaming. I know you're trying to change my mind. And Dom said that that doesn't work. The idea will  _ never _ hold. So you can do whatever you want to me here, but when I wake up, I'll still be me. So  _ fuck you _ , Mr. Fischer!"

"There'll be time for that," Fischer says, smiling. "Lots of time, I think?" he glances to Ms. Charles.

She raises her eyebrows and nods, looking down at you confidently. "I should say so. Twenty times per layer of the dream, from what I can tell of the compound. We must have hours left on this level alone. The next level, almost a week. The level after that …"

"Months," Fischer finishes.

"It doesn't  _ matter _ how long," you say defiantly, the tears warm on your cheeks. "Because I'll remember everything you said on this level when i come back up. I'll remember that  _ any idea _ you tried to plant is  _ yours _ . It'll never hold. I'll never believe it's my idea."

"Oh, but Ariadne …" Ms. Charles says, her voice filled with bemused mock concern. She squats down next to you. "How do you know it  _ isn't _ your idea?"

"Wh-what do you mean?!" you ask harshly. "You just  _ told me _ ! It's not my idea!"

"You mean … " Ms. Charles asks thoughtfully, "that you don't think Mr. Fischer is in control?"

The question startles you. You look up at Fischer, but find it almost impossible to meet his gaze. You look away, back to Ms. Charles, your breath quivering.

"It's not the same thing," you say.

Ms. Charles smiles a little sadly, and puts her palm against your cheek. Her voice is now filled with genuine concern, "Oh, Ariadne. You never should have hooked up with those fools. They've got you thinking so  _ literally _ . It's got your head all twisted up."

She rests a hand on your shoulder and smiles kindly, "See, I know that the moment things went wrong in here, you started to get the idea yourself. Fischer isn't as easy as we were told. Fischer's mind is stronger than we thought. Fischer is in control. Fischer has been in control the whole time. I'm powerless next to Fischer. It's  _ not _ Mr. Fischer's idea. It's  _ yours _ . We just need to … help it along."

You feel a new kind of fear growing in the pit of your stomach. Is she right? Hadn't you been wondering if Fischer had set the whole thing up?  _ No no no _ , you repeat to yourself.  _ It's not the same thing! _

Ms. Charles continues to smile at you, kindly. She sighs.

"Listen, Ariadne. Each layer of the dream will be different. Mr. Fischer's been trained for this. I'm that part of his subconscious. I was trained by the best," she chuckles. "the extractor that trained me … he said I was a natural.  _ A genius _ . Van Gogh kind of thing, you know? Makes your Dom look like a kid with fingerpaints. In another lifetime, if I didn't have so much to do up there," she gestures, nodding up to the waking world, "but as you know, we've got lots of time down here."

You try to scoot away from her, but your back is against the wall, and her kindness is captivating. Sincere.

"So each layer of the dream will be different," she continues. "I'm not going to give away all the surprises. But  _ this layer _ is unique.  _ This layer _ is  _ your dream _ . In  _ this layer _ you know you're dreaming. So in  _ this layer _ there's no reason to hide what we're doing. Because even in  _ your dream _ , in the dream you made, you know that Mr. Fischer is in control. You know that you're already his."

"I'm not," you say, crying.

"Awww," she sighs softly, and she looks over to Fischer, and your eyes follow hers. He's standing there, smiling confidently, and your world reels with doubt. "But you are."

She smiles as if half apologizing to you, and pats your cheek. Then she looks over to the guards and nods at them. One of them takes a step back and knocks twice on door frame. You hear heavy booted footfalls and a trio of men enter the room with a familiar grey metal case. They open it up in front of you and begin to pull out the hookups as Fischer and Ms. Charles roll up their sleeves.

"No, please," you begin, a panic starting to grow. Ms. Charles pulls down your sleeve and one of the men straps the wristband to you.

"Sweet dreams," Ms. Charles whispers, and darkness washes over you …


	2. his student

“The moebius strip is a simple impossible object that’s easy to make, a closed loop in three dimensional space,” he says. His voice is calm and composed, like all your professors, but there’s an intensity behind it—a passionate edge that makes you sit up a little in the uncomfortable wooden chair, and lean forward.

At the front of the lecture hall he reaches up, the nub of chalk poised between his long thin fingers as he sketches without turning his back to the students. The moebius strip he’s drawing is a thin sheet of ribbon, twisted over on itself and connected in ring.

“If you walk straight ahead,” he says with a small smile, drawing a dashed line for a path, “you walk through this little kink and eventually … ” the line curves around, “find yourself exactly where you started.”

“Can you imagine being _his_ student?” Charlie asks, her voice low, a little scandalous. You look over and see her leaning back in her chair, her short red hair a sharper contrast to the uniform white blouse than most. You look a question at her, momentarily confused, and she says, “Everyone says he’s _very_ picky.”

You turn your attention back to the front of the class, and Professor Fischer is smiling, his sharp blue eyes glittering over the crowd of students, “Now see, the thing about dream logic is that this structure needn’t just be physical. Not just about _space_. If we abstract the concept of the moebius strip, and other exotic geometries, we can apply it to more complex facets of the dreaming psyche. We can make closed psychological loops, in which the dreamer feels themselves to be thinking forward, but finds themselves in the same mental state, repeating the same thought patterns despite diverging circumstances. We can make closed loops of sociality, where the dreamer is unaware, in any individual moment that they are trapped in a loop of social behavior. You can even make,” he says, and his eyes glance over to you for a moment, and hold you, “a closed loop of time, a dream which folds back in on itself.”

“How’s he picky?” you whisper to Charlie. All the professors are picking their students, you remember, in the next two weeks, and you’re sure that no one understands dream architecture like Robert Fischer. _What could he mean, loops in time? Even the dreaming mind only experiences time in one direction. Time is a constant, a part of the nature of physical reality, not something you can just shift._

Charlie gives you one of her wry half grins, her red lips twisting up a bit at the side, and she cocks an eyebrow, “Everyone says he only picks the best. Curious, passionate, and _eager_ . Somebody with more talent than they know what to do with. Someone who has a ton of potential, but needs a lot of guidance. He has his own ideas, he’s not really interested in whatever little pet projects we can think up. He needs someone willing to ‘do what it takes’ to be _his_.” she chuckles conspiratorially, “Whatever that means.”

The class bell rings out, interrupting, Fischer mid-gesture. He smiles, amused at himself for going on too long and gives a little half shrug as the bell finishes. The lecture hall begins to fill with the sounds of people packing up their notebooks, standing, shuffling around, and Fischer raises his voice to be heard, “All right, everyone. Next time we’ll get into the temporal qualities of dreams, and how to _use_ these concepts. It’s more complicated than you think,” he says, raising a finger in good-humored warning.

“Come on,” Charlie says, slipping her notebook into her purse, “Coffee?”

You nod, but you continue to look down at Fischer. The strong sweep of his arm as he busies himself erasing the board. _What would it be like to be_ **_his_** _student?_

\----------

The sunlight is brilliant, white, not as warm as you would like sitting in the café with Charlie. The round glass table between you has a chess board of frosted glass, and the pieces—gold and silver, metal rather than glass—seem almost out of place in the ultra modern décor. As usual, you’re playing white, the gold pieces. Charlie’s threatening your bishop, but she seems bored with chess, her interest not focused on the game. She lifts her round glass cup with poise and sips at her latte.

“So, who do you want?” she asks, leaning back in her chair and putting an arm over the back of it, glancing around at the bustling campus.

_Who do I want?_ You repeat the question in your head. Something wrong with the question. Like it’s backwards. You take your attention away from the game and look around as well.

The campus is huge, bathed in the cool white light beneath a huge, empty blue sky. The angles are sharp, the shadows creating gorgeous, subtle geometric patterns of bright and dark. It reminds you— _has always reminded you_ —of Richard Meier’s work, of the Getty. The difference between the students in their uniforms and the faculty is stark. All those young people in their sharp white blouses or shirts, the boys in their charcoal slacks, the girls with their charcoal skirts and white socks, and the older men and women dotting the milling lines of foot traffic, their suits little splashes of color. _The students might as well be part of the architecture,_ you think, _all light and darkness. What is it about a uniform that makes me feel so vulnerable?_

It’s true that you had never gotten used to the short skirts. Ever since you came here as a student you’ve had the instinct to cover up, something colorful, maybe layers. Yellows and burgundies, a jacket, a scarf. Whenever you wear the short skirt out you’re afraid of it slipping up, of flashing your panties. Whenever you think about _that_ , you start to feel warm between your legs, and you press your thighs together instinctively, and blush.

“I’m thinking I'll go for Danford,” Charlie says. She smiles at you across the table, crossing her legs, and given your train of thought you avert your eyes just as you catch a quick glimpse of Charlie’s panties. But she doesn’t seem to notice, “She’s _gorgeous_ , and I want to see what I can do with the surrealists. Breton and the rest.”

You clear your throat and furrow your brow, “I don't know, Charlie.” You shift in your seat, very aware of the feel of the cool metal high on your thighs, “For some reason it doesn’t really feel like it’s about what _I want_.”

She chuckles a little, cocking her eyebrow the way she does, “What do you mean?”

You shrug, still feeling exposed, emotionally now as well as physically. The campus seems to do that to you. But it’s more than that. You struggle for words, “I don't know what it is. It’s like being here, being a student here, i feel … I don't know, unformed. Don’t you ever feel like that? Like, we’re all here to be made into something new. That’s what school’s about, I guess. And I feel like, how can i know what that new thing is? I feel like I'm being shaped here. Like it’s not about me and what I want. It’s about what they see in me. Don’t you ever feel like that?”

She looks at you curiously, really listening, still composed, but a little surprised. She pauses, thinking carefully about what you’ve said. After a few seconds she says, “No. I guess I don't.”

You put your hands together in your lap and sigh. Of course Charlie doesn’t understand. You look at her, the way she wears the uniform, the V of the blouse accentuating her breasts, her hips filling out the skirt, her poise in the outfit aware of its provocativeness, owning it. _Charlie is the kind of woman that could wear anything_ you think to yourself, _and she’d still be_ **_Charlie_** _in it. She’s the kind of woman to choose an advisor, to be in charge even in that relationship._

Charlie seems to notice your discomfort and she leans forward, her face genuinely kind, and concerned, “Look, Ariadne. It’s okay. You and I are just … really different people. Some people are made to go out there and get what they want. Other people need something else. We’ve known each other for a long time. You’re brilliant. You’ve got imagination and passion. I know you do. You just need … a firmer hand. Someone who can give you purpose. Who can put all that imagination to good use.”

It’s uncomfortable being seen this way, even by Charlie. It’s like she can see right through you, like you’re naked. You swallow, “like who?”

She sighs and sips again at her latte. “I don't know,” she says, at a loss.

You bite your lower lip and try to remember your professors. The images of them are hazy in your mind. They seem eager to help, sure, and all very interested in student projects. The really old guy with the messy white hair. The younger woman in the green suit. She’s really kind, she doesn’t intimidate you. But she seems safe. You can imagine working with her for years and at the end of it being comfortable, but not really changing, being exactly where you started.

_But what about Professor Fischer?_

The thought is intimidating, and you recoil from it almost as soon as you think it. He’s too smart, too incisive. What could you offer him?

But then you remember all your imagination. The architecture and art you’ve studied. You’re _good_. You follow what Fischer is saying in class most of the time. And there’s something there. Some deeper allure. He seems to know way more than he’s said. Everything he says just fits together, like the pieces of some infinitely complex puzzle.

You clear your throat, “Professor Fischer?”

Charlie was looking out at the crowd, but at this she raises her brows in genuine surprise and looks back to you, “Robert Fischer?” she takes a deep breath. “Well, it’s bold. He only takes one. I think … you’d really have to work for it.”

You blush, beginning to feel self-conscious.

“But maybe that would be good for you, Ariadne,” Charlie says after a moment. “Yeah. Something to really apply yourself to. You should talk to him. See what he has to say.”

You feel a little rush of confidence. There’s something about it that seems right. Charlie is right about you. You have tons of potential, and you came here to be formed. You just need—how did she put it?—a _firmer hand_. The image of Fischer’s hands, long-fingered and quick, but _strong_ , holding the chalk and making bold strokes across the board, flashes before you. _Yeah_ , you think. _He might just be perfect. Maybe I_ **_could be_** _his student._

\----------

“The novice dream architect,” Fischer says firmly from the center of the tiered lecture hall, “takes advantage of the dreaming mind’s capacity to fill out experience by imagining that time passes _more slowly_ in a dream. Different compounds can play with this effect in different ways, and the novice considers all of this a straightforward case of time dilation.”

“One compound: ten seconds in ‘real life’,” he steps forward, making a little wall with his right hand, and stepping his hand forward a pace, “ten minutes in the dream. Another compound: ten seconds in ‘real life’,” he steps his hand forward again, “ten _hours_ in the dream.”

He sighs, and sweeps his hands outward, a little exasperated and disappointed in his naïve colleagues. You watch him carefully now, as his blue eyes seek the ceiling and then come back to his students.

“The problem with all this, of course, is that it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the mind,” he says, tapping his right temple. “Time _may_ be linear, time _may_ be part of physical reality—I don’t really care to get into those debates, Professor Walker’s class on ontology is right down the hall—” at this a little chuckle ripples through the students, “but regardless, the _mind perceives_ time through a series of tricks. Our _sense_ of time is totally different, and a good dream architect knows how to do this, and how to _leverage_ this for maximum effect on the dreamer.”

You nod to yourself. That _does_ make sense. It makes, what was his name, Professor … Dom? No, Cobb … it makes Professor Cobb’s obsession with time contraction seem silly.

“See, when the dreamer switches from one scene to the next, the mind knows what to do,” Fischer says, gesturing to the board behind him. He’s drawn a timeline with huge gaps in it. He runs his chalk along the line, “you’re in a restaurant, having dinner with a friend,” he says, tracing along the line, “and suddenly,” he skips the chalk across the gap, “you’re at home, undressing for a shower.”

He turns back, “The scene shift doesn’t seem strange to the dreamer. If the dreamer’s attention even bothers to go to how they got home from the restaurant, the dreaming mind instantaneously begins to populate the ‘gap’ in memory, in however much detail is required,” he smiles with excitement, and rolls his hand in a simple gesture, “really, if the dreamer pays too much attention to the gap they _could_ wake up, but it’s far more likely that it will just provoke another scene change, that the setting of the dream will shift with their attention.”

You feel a rush of pleasure at his explanation. It fits with your own experience of dreaming. You smile in spite of yourself, for a moment forgetting how intimidating he is, and as he pauses and looks around the room, his eyes land on yours again. He seems to notice you, your smile. He raises his eyebrows at you in a subtle acknowledgement of your delight, and smiles back.

Then he turns back to the board, half-facing the class, “Now, with this in mind, we can return to the notion of the closed loop, the moebius strip. You can see that what’s important here _isn’t_ the design of some straightforward structure, but rather leveraging the dreamer’s capacity to take impressions seriously, to run with them, in order to make the suggestion of a loop. Hints that come back around, dots that can only be connected in one way. If you set up the scenario right, then the dreamers mind … will take care of the rest.”

The class change bell rings as if right on cue, and Fischer’s grin widens. When the bell stops he says, “Next class is shifts in the dreaming persona.” He looks back at you and smiles again.

As the other students gather their things, murmuring to one another and making for the exits at the back of the lecture hall, you pick up your notebook and begin to make your way down the center aisle towards Fischer. He’s stacking his papers, but he spies you halfway down and smiles self-assuredly to himself.

“Ariadne, isn’t it?” he asks as you approach.

“Yes, that’s right Professor,” you say blushing.

“I’m glad you enjoyed the lecture,” he says confidently.

You blush and smile, “Yes … I did.”

He nods, “You did very decent work on your mid-term, Ariadne. You’ve got quite an imagination. A little … unformed, but there’s a lot there. What can I do for you?”

You clear your throat, and hold your notebook over your chest, between the two of you, “well, Professor, I was wondering if I might talk to you. I mean, I know I _am_ talking to you, but,” he chuckles, "I mean, in your office hours.”

“Of course,” he says, “what’s this about?”

“Well, I was wondering if … if you’d picked a student yet. I mean, someone to be yours—” you stutter a little, "I mean, your student.”

“Ahhhh,” he says, growing a little more serious and reserved. He nods, “All right, well let’s talk about it. How about three o’clock? Tomorrow?”

“I’ve got—I’ve got a class with Professor Nielan,” you begin, and Fischer looks a little more stern, maybe disappointed in you, and you trail off. _Don’t blow this, Ariadne,_ you tell yourself, _it’s time to take some chances_. “But this is important. I can miss a day with Nielan.”

Fischer smiles, small and controlled, but genuine, “Good. I’ll see you then.”

“Thanks, Professor,” you say, blushing again in spite of yourself, and you hurry off and out of the range of those piercing blue eyes.

\----------

“Did he seem interested?” Charlie asks you, hurrying along through the hallway.

You smile nervously and shrug, “I don't know. I think so. He said that my work showed imagination.”

“Imagination is good,” she says encouragingly, her flats clicking across the marble tiling. “what are you going to talk to him about?”

“I-I’m not sure,” you reply. You peek down at the notebook, at some of your sketches. A kind of seashell design, neat but strange, more reminiscent of Gaudí than the starkness of the school. You remember staying up late the night before working on the sketches. After talking to Professor Fischer you’d felt … inspired. It’s not just the physical layout of the rooms that’s excited you, but some preliminary ideas you had about playing with time based on his last couple of lectures. The subject enters the building after themself, not really recognizing that it’s them from behind. They follow themselves all the way up the stairs into a cozy, warm room. Inside the room is a little chest with a tiny key. There’s something extremely vulnerable about it to you, the sketch, the scenario. Maybe Fischer will see something in it. Maybe he can help you finish it.

“Well, i hope you have more than ‘I don't know’ for him,” Charlie says, shaking her head good naturedly and teasing you a little.

“Yeah,” you reply. “i hope so too. Cover for me with Nielan?” you say, nervously hiding the sketches.

“All right. Good luck,” and Charlie takes a left turn through a hallway with tall windows and that white blazing light, and you hurry along up the stairs to the right.

\----------

 _How did I get lost?!_ You ask yourself, frantically, darting down the hallway and not even really seeing the numbers etched into the marble above the doorways. _I can’t believe I'm about to lose out on this. He’ll never pick me as his student … !_

You nearly drop your papers as you look down a crossing hallway, and finally recognize it, the path to his office. All the way at the end. Fumbling for your papers, you clutch them to your chest and rush down the hallway as quick as you can.

As you get close to the end of the hallway, you deliberately slow your pace. You take a deep breath, and rub your hands on your skirt to wipe away the sweat. You tuck your long hair behind one ear, and take the last twenty feet towards his office slowly and carefully, glancing down at your watch. _Three twenty seven._ You fight down your disappointment and panic, struggling to regain control of yourself. _It could be worse. Just tell him you got lost. He’ll understand._

You stop at the end of the hallway, at the door to his office, frosted glass in a brushed steel frame. You neaten your papers one last time and, hesitantly, knock on the glass with two knuckles.

Almost immediately you hear his voice from within the office, “Come in.”

You open the door. The office is huge, all white stone, a semicircle with the flat wall across from you, one big window. The window looks out on the sharp blue sky and the green of the campus lawn far below. Fischer is sitting behind a large, black wooden desk. He looks … _different_. Relaxed. Not performing, the way he does in the classroom. But still—very much in control. His elbows are propped on the desktop, his fingers steepled, and he sits at an angle to the desk so that his high cheekbones are framed by the light, and his blue eyes blaze in it.

“You’re late,” he says softly, a statement of fact.

You open your mouth to reply, but he makes a gesture with his hand to dismiss it before you can speak, “It doesn’t matter. Sit down.”

You close your mouth before speaking and, nodding and swallowing the lump in your throat, you step forward into the room across the deep red of the carpet and sit down in the glass and metal chair across the huge desk from him.

“It looks like you brought something,” he says casually, gesturing to the desk in front of you.

With hands that tremble only a little, you take out the sketches and spread them out across the desk in front of you. He looks down at them without moving, his intense eyes flitting over every line, studying it. He nods slowly as he looks, and then he looks suddenly up into your eyes, searching.

You squirm under his gaze. Something seems off, but you can’t tell what. Fischer seems more exposed than you’ve ever seen him before, but exposed in a way you’re not used to—like someone who is used to being naked, and confident in it, even aggressively so. It makes _you_ feel naked.

“Well,” he says, with a long pause, and his eyes flit down for a moment, perhaps to some books on the lower shelf across from him. He gives a little smile, “it’s a start.”

You feel a little flush of pleasure, even hope. “Thank you, Professor—” you begin.

And then you’re surprised by a noise. A muffled sound of surprise comes from beneath Fischer’s desk, behind it, where you can’t see it.

For a moment, you’re confused, but Fischer just keeps looking at you, “Yes, you were saying?”

“I … I worked on these sketches based on what you were talking about,” you begin again, but then the sound changes. There’s a distinctive moan of pleasure from a woman’s voice, beneath and behind his desk, and you hear a wet sound, slurping. Fischer smiles broadly with a kind of relaxed pleasure, and he leans towards you, his shoulders releasing tension as he relaxes.

As it dawns on you what’s happening, you feel the blood rush to your cheeks. Shock, embarrassment, outrage, shame—they all begin to compete for your attention, but somehow none of these emotions can shake your captivation with the man sitting across the desk from you. They break on him like waves on a pillar of stone, and in spite of your mortification you can’t help but admire the man and feel ashamed of yourself.

“I-I-I’m sorry, Professor. I didn’t realize. I’m sorry I came late. I’ll go!” you say, stumbling quickly over your words. You leave your sketches on the table and stand up quickly.

“Ariadne,” Fischer says, holding your eyes and smiling confidently, “you don’t have to go.”

Another moan escapes from beneath the desk, this one orgasmic, mingling with the wet sounds of slurping. You shake your head, “I'm sorry!” and rush for the office door.

From behind you, you hear his voice, confident and firm, “All right. We’ll try again later.”

And you slip out, trembling all over, legs warm and face bright red.

\----------

You can’t tell Charlie. You can’t tell anyone. There’s no way. Is this what she meant by him being “picky”? You shake your head, wiping away tears of confusion and shame. To think that he had— _some woman_ under there! And he asked you into his office and let you sit down and show him your drawings. _Some woman_ you think again, with bitterness, and a new wash of shame rushes over you when you realize that part of what you’re feeling is jealousy.

You hurry down the hallway, shaking your head. _Is that what it takes to be his student?_ You think. In spite of yourself you imagine it, being on your knees, unfastening his pants. _What would it feel like to put him inside my mouth?_ You wonder, and shake your head, trying to clear the thought from your mind. You’ve never done something like that before. You haven’t really had time. School has kept you busy, and what would someone want to do that for. That’s all for him. _If I’m going to start_ **_fucking,_** you think to yourself bitterly, _I’ll start with my own pleasure._

You wipe away a fresh spill of tears and shake your head. _No. This was a mistake. I’ll find some other way._ You think sternly. Right now, you just need to clear your head.

\----------

 _What a creep,_ you’ve told yourself over and over again on the way to his class. You’ve said it like a mantra again and again in your head, trying to drown out the other feelings, the feelings that make you blush, that make you, once again, conscious of how short the uniform skirt is. You’ve said it so many times that you haven’t really noticed what Charlie has been saying to you.

You bump into another student and drop your notebook. He looks over at and shakes his head, walking on.

“What’s _wrong_ with you today?” Charlie asks, concern tinging her voice. She reaches down to help you gather up your things.

“Nothing,” you say quickly. She look a question at you, and you sigh and shake your head. “It-it’s really nothing, Charlie.” you pause, and as she scoops up a sheaf of your papers you say, lower your voice, hesitating, “Have you—have you ever _gone down on_ a guy?”

She looks over at you, raising her eyebrows and chuckling. But when she sees that you’re serious, she looks studiously down the papers she’s collecting, smiling with amusement, “I take it your meeting with Robert went well.”

“What?! No!” you say, blushing and pulling the papers away from her, “It’s not like that!”

“What _is_ it like?” she asks, laughing a little and standing up with you.

“It’s not like _anything_ , Charlie,” you say, irritably, “this isn’t about Professor Fischer. Nothing happened.”

“Mmm,” she says, amused, incredulous, mockingly disappointed. “If you say so.”

There’s an awkward silence, awkward for you at least, but Charlie always seems at ease. The students walk around the two of you, bustling on their way to class.

“ _So?_ ” you ask.

“So?” she replies, looking a little exasperated, but still in good humor.

“So _have you?_ …”

“Oh, Ariadne,” Charlie replies, rolling her eyes, “Are you serious? Of course. I mean i knew you didn’t have a social life, but this is ridiculous.”

You blush and furrow your brow, “I've had more important things to do.”

“Mhmmm,” Charlie replies. She shakes her head and starts walking to class again.

You look down at your feet, and then hurry to catch up. You walk beside her for a few seconds and then say, “Why would you do it, though? Even if i was going to waste my time with sex, I'd want someone to focus on me. On _my_ pleasure.”

She laughs, and shakes her head.

“What?”

“Ariadne, there’s two things,” Charlie says, glancing at you out of the side of her eyes as she walks confidently down the hall. “One: there’s more fun to sex than just getting pleasure, otherwise it’s just glorified mutual masturbation.”

You blush fiercely, “I know that—”

“Ohhh, do you?” she says, teasingly patronizing. “And two: come _on_ . _You_ focused on _yourself_?”

You furrow your brow, confused, “What? What do you mean?”

“Ms. ‘It’s-not-about-me-and-what-I-want’? Ms. ‘I-feel-like-I’m-being-shaped’? You really expect me, your best pal Charlie to think Ariadne is _dominant_ in bed? That she’s a taker?”

You feel yourself turning bright red, and Charlie shakes her head, “I don't think so, Ariadne. Oh, I'm sure you’ve got a wild side. As long as you can find someone with a firm hand.” She grins conspiratorially at you, opens the door, and walks into the lecture hall.

\----------

 _What a creep_ , you try to tell yourself, but you can’t help but hang on his words. You can’t help but look into his eyes. And when you do, you find yourself pressing your thighs together and shifting uncomfortably in your seat. _What a creep._

“So you look around, you’re in a school, and suddenly,” Fischer claps his hands together down at the bottom of the lecture hall, “you’re naked!”

The students laugh nervously, and Fischer shakes his head, “Too cliché. But why is it a cliché? That’s what we have to ask ourselves. What is it about certain settings that they resonate with our dreaming mind?”

Fischer stuffs his hands in his pockets, walking across the space, half looking up at his audience, “Schools are places of vulnerability. Places of potential. Nobody escapes school without some kind of trauma. We’re formed in schools,” he says with a shrug, and as he turns to continue back across the hall his eyes find yours and he smiles. You blush, and look away, but you can’t help but keep listening. _What a creep._

“The important thing, though, isn’t to memorize some list of associations. We’re not Freudians, not Jungians. There’s not one collective unconscious, with a code that indexes all these symbols to different powerful associations,” he says. You look around the lecture hall at students, leaning back or forward, some listening attentively, some taking notes. “No. If you want to design dreams, you have to know your audience. You have to know the dreamer. What makes them vulnerable? What turns them on? Remember the moebius strip? The little kink that makes a two-sided figure into a one-sided figure? Well you’ve got to know your dreamer’s _kinks_.”

You look down at him and blush again, and then look back at the students. The blonde two rows down. The girl with the black bobbed hair. _She must be in here,_ you think to yourself. _Whoever was in the office with him. Is he going to pick_ **_her_** _over me? Because she does that for him? What a creep!_

“So that’s key,” Fischer says, as you search the audience. “And you might think, ‘oh this will take a lot of research, you’re going to have to look into their whole past, everything,’” he says, and he waves his arms and the gesture draws your attention back to him, “but no. You have to improvise. You have to read your dreamer. You have to see right through them.” His eyes catch yours again and you swallow. The bell rings and he holds your gaze. As the bell dies away you hurry out of the lecture hall, and you hear from behind you, “next time we’ll talk about how the dreaming persona shifts and adapts in response to new settings—” but his voice is cut off as you hurry out the door.

\----------

Nothing you can do would get him out of your head, and as the day wore on the embarrassment and shame grew. Everywhere you walked, you wondered where she was. If she knew that you had been the one in the office. _She must have known_ you think. _I left my notes all over his desk._

It was kind of strange working out in the huge empty gym, like being in an abandoned church. All those high windows turned into mirrors against the darkness outside, reflecting the lights. You rode ten miles on one of the bikes and finally started to feel better.

You knew that you needed to work off some of this energy, but you’ve always hated the gym. The huge open floor plan and the uniform workout clothes that leave even less to the imagination than your skirt. It always feels like you’re on display, and display is decidedly _not_ what you want for yourself right now.

Plus, the showers. Mens’ and womens’ of course, as if everyone isn’t bisexual these days. Is it worse having people look at your body, or seeing everyone else’s? You push the thought out of your mind. That’s why you came to the gym late. Three o’clock in the morning. Literally nobody there. So you walk through the silent rows of bikes mopping the sweat from your face with a towel, and turn down into the women’s locker room.

You barely notice your surroundings as you head to your locker. The ceilings in the locker room are lower than anywhere else in the campus, the light dim and richer, almost yellow, and the walls and floors are tiled with shiny squares somewhere between a slate grey and cobalt. The clatter of your locker echoes across the empty walls, and you push the contents around inside. Your uniform, neatly folded, your notebooks. Something clatters inside your locker and you look at it: a hefty metal chess piece, a golden bishop, like the one from the café. _How did that get in here?_ You think, furrowing your brow for a moment. You reach out for it, but before you touch it you shake your head, and reach for the clean bath towels, one big for your body, the other small, both soft and grey, and set them on the bench in front of you before tossing the sweaty hand-towel into the locker. It falls over the chess piece.

You sigh as you begin to strip out of your workout clothes. You toss the short white tank top into the locker, and then peel off the charcoal sports bra. You look down at your small breasts, and feel yourself start to blush, start to remember Professor Fischer’s office, so you shake your head and look up into the small mirror on the door to your locker.

_Plain Ariadne_ , you think to yourself. _A little cute, maybe, but nothing to write home about._ Your face is flushed from the workout, from the hint of the memory, and your hair is damp with sweat around your hairline. You shake your head at yourself, and pull off your charcoal shorts. Your white panties are nearly soaked with sweat, and you can see the dark triangle of hair between your legs through them. You slip them off and toss the rest of your clothes in a bundle into the locker, quickly wrapping the big soft towel around your body and picking up the smaller one.

Your feet slap softly, almost silently on the tile floor as you walk down the locker room to the showers with their open plan, a mirrored wall with gleaming steel shower heads, no stalls or curtains, just a shallow depression in the floor and clean steel drains spaced between the showerheads and body wash dispensers. During peak hours this whole place would be full of people, the locker room half choked with steam, but now you can see yourself perfectly in the mirror as you pad up to one of the benches across from the showers. You look away, already too conscious of your body, and focus on what you’re doing.

You drape your smaller towel over your shoulders and take off the bigger one, folding it neatly and placing it on the bench. Then you take the smaller towel, starting to pull it off your shoulders when you catch a pleasant smell. _What is that?_ You wonder. _Some new detergent?_

You bury your face in the freshly cleaned towel, a childlike pleasure, soft and comforting. You can smell a hint of your own smell in the towel, your sweat, but far more strongly there’s a crisp, almost spiced smell. It’s familiar, but hard to place …

_It’s_ **_him,_** you think suddenly. _Professor Fischer. It reminds me of his cologne._

You blush fiercely, and pull the towel away from your face. You shake your head and, avoiding seeing your embarrassment in your face in the mirror, you step forward and deliberately turn on the water.

You drape the towel over the pipe of the showerhead and step into the hot water, letting it run over your body and your hair, combing your fingers across your scalp. You keep shaking your head at yourself. _Seeing him everywhere. Smelling him everywhere. What a fucking creep._

You pump body wash into your hand and lather it, spreading the soap under your arms, the nape of your neck, and quickly over your breasts and the inside of your thighs. You soap your face and step into the water, feeling the foam course down your body. You rub your hands over your closed eyelids, and when your face is clear you open your eyes. The mirror in front of you is fogged, now, your body the willowy suggestion of subtle curves. You smile slightly at the blurred reflection in spite of yourself as you turn off the water. Steam continues to rise from the floor of the shower, and you lift your hands up behind your head, into your hair, and roll your hips to one side, watching the blurred, pale suggestion of a body in front of you.

**_Almost_** _seductive._ **_Almost_** alluring. **_Almost_** _confident_ , you think. When she’s not you. When she’s someone else. Someone like Charlie.

You study the reflection in front of you, like an impressionist painting of a woman, displaying her body, proud of the little sweep of pink pouting lips, the suggestion of breasts, the curve of hips. Your smile widens, and the pink sweep of the reflection’s lips smiles back at you. _But something’s not right. It’s false somehow. Just a fantasy. Not who I_ ** _really_** _am._

And then, the blurred image of a hand moves slowly and confidently over the lips of the woman in the reflection, and before you realize what’s happening you feel a firm, strong hand covering your mouth.

Your whole body tenses, and your eyes widen. For a moment you freeze, and just as you’re about to push away with your arms you feel two more hands grabbing your wrists, still poised at the base of your neck. You gasp into the hand holding your mouth, and then feel your wrists moved, firmly but gently, higher, up over your head. Something soft but firm closes around your right wrist and there’s a soft clinking, jingling sound. You feel the same close around your left wrist, soft but close, and the same jingling sound. Then both your arms are lifted over your head in front of you, into your view.

Your wrists are wrapped in lavender leather cuffs lined with deep purple fur. And they’re being held by … a woman’s hands. You can’t see the people behind you, except for subtle, shadowy motions in the blurred reflection of the mirror, but the woman’s hands—she’s wearing nail polish. A distinctive lavender color. It’s … Charlie’s nail polish. You know. You always thought it was so sexy on her. You swallow, brow furrowing with fear and confusion. The woman’s hands reach up, and link the cuffs together with a thick steel chain over the showerhead. Then they give your forearms a gentle, almost comforting squeeze.

A fit of trembling runs down your whole body, and you feel your legs wobble. The chain above you goes taut, holding you up firmly.

The woman’s hands reach up for the hand towel you draped over the pipe of the shower head, gently pulling it down. You watch her twist up the towel, and then the hand over your mouth slips away, and the towel takes its place, tied firmly around your mouth.

The smell.

The smell of _him_.

On the towel.

It fills your senses.

And as you tremble, in spite of yourself, you feel warmth spreading between your legs, feel yourself become wet and slick. Hot tears fill your eyes, and you feel a presence lean in close to your ear, and hear a woman’s voice, “Shhhhhh.” You sob into the towel, and motion in the fogged mirror shows you one figure stepping away, and another stepping forward.

And then you feel hands. Two, firm, hands, one resting delicately on each hip. They slowly trace up the sides of your body and as you look down you see strong, long fingers reach up to cup your little breasts. In those hands your breasts look rounder. The hands shape your breasts into something fuller, and as you take a shuddering breath you watch them swell between those fingers, pushing against them, and the strength leaves your legs completely, leaves you hanging from the shower head, your body taking some new, seductive shape, like clay being formed by an artist.

And that smell.

_Of him._

In your nostrils. Filling your mind.

As the fingers play over your nipples you find yourself imagining, in spite of yourself, that it’s _him_ . It’s _Fischer_ shaping you under his hands. And the wetness between your legs becomes more slippery, hotter, and you blink out big tears. As you feel something warm and heavy, hard and soft, tracing up the inside of your thigh. Your legs tremble as you feel him— _Fischer_ you tell yourself—probing and teasing, rubbing over the little knot of your clit. Waves of deep pleasure wash through your legs, and one of the hands slips up from your breast to clutch, gently but possessively, like a collar around your neck. You moan in spite of yourself as you feel him pushing between the slick lips of your pussy, as you feel yourself stretching around him, as you feel him filling you up from behind inch by inch. You hold onto the chain of the cuffs for support and, almost without thinking, you arch your back to push him deeper into you.

After a long moment, he draws his hand from your breast down to your hip. You hang there, suspended, penetrated by him, and with one hand on your hip and the other on your neck, you feel helpless to move. He— _whoever he is_ — _no,_ **_Fischer_** you reply to yourself desperately—has the full use of your body. Holding you firmly in place, you feel him draw halfway out of you, the swell of the head of his cock rolling inside you as he moves. Your body cringes with the pleasure of it, and then he drives into you, deep and hard, pulling you all the way onto his cock. You gasp into the towel, and he draws out again, and then plunges in hard, and you feel the warmth and softness of his balls slapping against your exposed clitorus as he fucks you.

_As he uses me. As he makes me his,_ you think, shuddering with involuntary pleasure.

He fucks you steadily, turning the head of his cock with a delicious twist each time he drives into you, and you can feel the pleasure in your body mounting as you whimper into the towel, can feel your pussy clenching around his cock. You grind your hips back as hard as you can, squeezing your legs around him, trying to hold him as deep inside of you as you can, and his hand slips from your hip to between your legs, gently rubbing over your clitorus as your body explodes with the deepening pleasure of orgasm. The towel falls out of your mouth and drops to the floor of the shower as you feel him pulse, hot and thick, inside of you.

And through your swimming vision, through the moaning cries of pleasure pulled unbidden from your body, you see your blurred reflection again in the mirror.

A different painting than the one before.

A girl, her hands bound over her head, her breasts full from deep, ragged breath, a strong hand around her throat, her face flushed, her lips full, her mouth slack, her wet hair hanging disheveled across her face. Being fucked from behind. Being used. Cum dribbling down the inside of her thigh.

So different from the painting before.

And you think, _there I am._ **_Ariadne._** _That’s me._

\----------

“Remember, the dreaming mind adapts instantly to a change of context,” Fischer says from the bottom of the hall. He snaps his fingers, “it fills in the blanks. It knows what to do.”

You look down at him. His voice is the only thing that can take your mind off of … whatever happened. Was it just a dream? All you remember after the incident in the locker room was waking up in your bed. But then again, you were sore when you woke up. Maybe it was shock. Maybe that’s why you didn’t remember going back to your dorm. But if the dream was intense enough, maybe you’d wake up sore anyway.

You furrow your brow and lean into his voice. You’ve got to use it. Use it to block out all the other sounds, all the internal dialog, the speculation.

“If you _know_ this, you can do powerful things with dreams,” he says earnestly, looking up at the crowded lecture hall. “People say that dreams are strange, but they make their _own kind_ of sense, and if you can’t look into that sense, you’ll never know how to deal with the dreamer.”

He shrugs and begins to pace the lecture hall, “within the dream, extremely powerful experiences can be cathartic. Fantasy is given free reign. What might be totally mundane to the waking psyche—a stranger frowning at us, a child crying—can be traumatic, terrifying to the dreamer. And likewise, circumstances which could be horrifying to someone awake—being accosted, screaming in public, whatever—can be thrilling, cathartic, even comforting.”

You nod, biting your lip.

“So, one moment the dreamer is a waiter, hurrying as fast as he can in an endless cycle of impossible demands from diners. An anxiety dream, a nightmare of frustration. And if you, the architect, you plan things right, he can walk through a door into the kitchen except—” Fischer makes a look of surprise, raises a finger, “except it’s not a kitchen. It’s his bedroom. He’s alone, watching a dirty video. Now it’s a sex dream. It’s about desire. Maybe about shame. It depends on the dreamer. The room. The video.”

Fischer waves his hands dismissively, “And this is all mundane, this is _mundane_ stuff. Look at reports from lucid dreamers. Someone decides to be a sparrow in their dream, we’re not even talking Freudian or Jungian stuff, no bedrooms, no distant mother, they just want to be a bird. And lucid dreamers report that they _feel_ what it’s like to have to flap their wings in a burst of feathers, to struggle into the air, to feel like they’re swimming against emptiness, the _joy_ of finding that current, that cushion, on which they feel _individual feathers_ shifting, cupping the air, staying aloft. All that in a few moments. A few seconds.”

Fischer smiles, holds up a finger, using it to enunciate, “If you really _understand_ your dreamer, if you really _know_ them,” he says, pausing, “there’s really no limit to what you can do.”

The bell rings, but he doesn’t flinch, continues to smile up at the classroom. As it trails off he looks around, finds your eyes, says, “But this kind of thing, that’s for the advanced seminar. We’ll get into all of that later.” He nods up to the class, and everyone begins to file out.

\----------

“Was it you?” you ask her, your voice tense. Charlie’s sitting at the table with a couple of other students, her cappuccino poised in one hand. She looks over at you and smiles, friendly, pleased to see you.

“Oh hey, Ariadne!”

You swallow, looking into her eyes, and your voice shakes a little, “Was it you?”

Charlie cocks her head a little, quirking an eyebrow, “Was what me?”

“A couple of nights ago. In the gym.”

Confusion and concern cross her face, and she gives you her full attention.

“In the gym? No … what do you mean? What’s going on?” she sets her drink down in front of her, adjusting it on the saucer with her perfectly manicured hands. And then you notice.

The lavender nail polish gleaming softly on the end of each finger.

She’s looking at you, worry on her face.

“Ariadne, what’s wrong?”

“Two nights ago,” you say, your voice breaking, blood rushing to your cheeks. “Two nights ago, Charlie, where were you?”

She looks taken aback, offended, “What is this, an interrogation?”

“Where were you?!” you say, stepping forward aggressively. “Were you in the gym?”

Charlie frowns and scoffs, waving those gleaming nails through the air in a dismissive gesture, “No, Ariadne. I _wasn’t_ in the gym.”

“Then where were you?!” you insist firmly. You can feel tears burning your eyes. The other students are looking up at you, confused, embarrassed for you.

Charlie scoffs again, a staccato chuckle. She points across the table at another student, someone you don’t recognize, a cute girl with short blonde curls, “I was with Amos. _All night._ ” She emphasizes. The girl across the table gives you a wry grin and a light blush.

But Charlie’s finger, pointing so confidently across the table, is tipped with that lavender nail polish.

Your blush increases, and you turn to go.

“Ariadne!” you hear Charlie call out, concern edging into her voice again. “What’s gotten into you?”

But you hurry away, heels clicking quickly across the marble of the open hallway.

\----------

You can’t get it out of your mind. No matter what you do. You look down at the papers spread out across the huge library table in front of you, the quick, sloppy sketches, the best you’ve been able to do since that night.

_It’s trauma,_ you tell yourself, but another part of you rolls her eyes at that. _It’s not trauma. You’re just …_ **_distracted_**.

You rub your fingers against your temples and squeeze your eyes shut, sighing. You’ve got to focus. Classes are over. Final projects will be due in a few days. And you still haven’t been picked.

_I_ **_can’t_** _go back to him! I_ **_can’t_** _be his!,_ one part of you says, and immediately another, _I need to be his. I need it._

“It wasn’t even really _him!_ ” you mutter to yourself, out loud now, “That’s just—just a fantasy. To make yourself feel better about what happened. A coping mechanism.”

As if Professor Fischer roams the halls at night. As if he has to. He’s got— _whoever_ that was. Under his desk.

_Who_ **_was_** _it?,_ some part of yourself asks, scared. You shake your head, fighting down the thought and the line of questions it gives rise to. _Charlie knows._ You shake your head, _It couldn’t have been Charlie._ You wipe your eyes, burning a little bit with tears, _It_ **_had_** _to have been Charlie._ That nail polish. So distinctive. Your oldest friend.

You let out a shaky sigh and wipe away the tears before they can fall, leaning back in the ultra-modern swivel chair. It doesn’t matter who it was. Not right now. Right now you have work to do. A semester to finish. You can worry about everything later.

You look around at your little nook of the library. The dim light doesn’t even reach the top of the high ceilings. There’s just these three big desks, right up against the glass half-wall, a sort of balcony overlooking the quiet study hall of the library two floors down. In your peripheral vision all you can see is the dim aisles of bookshelves all bathed in shadows, the automatic motion-sensor lights all off. As always, this little corner of the library is deserted. But down below there are dozens of students sitting quietly at their drafting tables, Macbooks gleaming, or huge pieces of architectural paper unrolled in front of them, working with pencils and compasses and protractors. There’s something so peaceful about being up here, looking down on everyone else, knowing that you’re just a little shadow or a face to them if they ever glance up at all. It’s almost enough to calm you down.

You stand up, pushing the swivel chair back a foot with your thighs as you do so and stretch out your arms looking back down at your drawings. Not as bad as you keep telling yourself. Not your best work, but salvageable, and enough for the end of the semester. You lean over the drawings, moving one of the big sheets of paper with your splayed fingers, turning it so that a corner of the drawing comes into the pool of light under the small metal desk lamp.

You furrow your brow as you study it. Several quick sketches, really quite personal. Experiments, half unformed, with the quick changes of perspective that Fischer lectured about on the last day of class. An office, the bathroom on an airplane, a party. _There’s something here_ you think, _I just need to finish it up._

You reach out with your other hand, gripping the far edge of the desk and leaning closer over the drawings, biting your lower lip.

Suddenly, with a start, you feel hands grasping around yours from the other side of the desk. Someone hiding under the desk— **_how?!_ **—and reaching up behind it to grab your wrists. For a moment, you can’t think of what to do and then your eyes focus on the hands.

That same lavender nail polish. The same nail polish you saw earlier on Charlie’s hands. You give a small, feeble cry, and the hands clasp firmly around your wrists and pull you forward, pull your wrists to the two legs of the desk that lie across its surface from you.

As they pull you suddenly start to struggle, but the hands are just as strong as yours, and your fear and confusion makes you weaker. You’re pulled down as your torso stretches across the wide desktop, your cheek, your breasts, and your tummy pressing against its hard surface. As you’re bent over the desk, you feel how your skirt doesn’t cover your panties, feel exposed and the fear grows in your belly, you feel your body go slack, legs shaking.

“Ch-Charlie …” you manage to whisper, half-sobbing around the words, “Why?”

And then you feel a hand on the back of your neck, holding you gently but firmly against the desk. A shiver runs through your body and you draw a shuddering breath as the strength of that hand presses you against the top of the desk, holding you there helplessly.

_I don’t_ **_want_** _to get away,_ you catch yourself thinking, and feel your thighs and cheeks getting warmer, feel a pair of confused tears squeezed out of your eyes as you draw a ragged breath against the papers on the desk.

The figure beneath releases your left hand and then you feel her trying your right wrist to the desk with soft, silky rope. You go to move your left arm, but the hand on the back of your neck tightens, presses you down against the desk, and you lie still. As your right hand is secured, the figure moves to your left, and you feel the rope close around your wrist, holding you firmly in place. After a moment, the hand leaves the back of your neck.

You pull gently on the ropes, and as you do you feel them tighten, so you grip the edge of the desk and, shakily, you turn your head, trying to look up. But you can only look straight ahead or to the side, and as you look ahead you see your own face, bathed in the small pool of light from the desk lamp, reflected in the low glass wall in front of you, and beyond, through the reflection, the quiet, pristine study hall three floors down.

_If I scream, someone will hear me_ you think. _I can escape._

And then you see motion behind you in the reflection. The hint of a figure in a suit, and long-fingered, delicate hands reaching forward, like an artist approaching a lump of clay on a pottery wheel—hands that are strong, subtle, gentle, but self-assured. You see the outline of his face, sharp angles of jaw and cheekbones catching the dim light, but the rest of him is in shadow. The face tilts to one side, looking down at you, inspecting you, and those fingers reach forward, lifting the back of your skirt up off your ass, exposing your panties completely. He looks down at you for a long moment, and you hear him sigh with appreciation as one of his hands lets go of your skirt, reaching down.

And then you feel as finger hooks through the crotch of your panties, the knuckle resting at the very base of you, between the bottom of your lips and your ass. The feeling of his knuckle there spreads warmth down your thighs, and the knuckle pulls gently, peeling a gap between your panties and your skin. The air is cool on your pussy, and as he runs his knuckle gently down it slips along the wet groove between your lips, probing _just_ inside of you, and a low moan is pulled from deep inside of you.

Slowly the knuckle runs the length of your lips, nestling gently against your clit before he draws it back up to where he began. And now he pulls your panties further away from your skin with that knuckle, and you see him looking down at your exposed body.

 _At his prize,_ you think, and squirm your legs to try to press them together.

He gives a short chuckle, a single “heh” to your struggling, and then the other hand that was lifting your skirt falls out of view and you hear a subtle sound of metal slipping against metal, and your body freezes as you feel something cold and thin— _a knife?_ —threaded beneath his between your panties and your skin, resting against your pussy. You draw in a shuddering breath and then, _snip_ , the unmistakable sound of a pair of scissors as he cuts the bottom of your panties, straight across. You feel the damp fabric shrink away with the scissors and the finger as your ruined underwear leaves your pussy wet, and cold, exposed to the air behind you. You let out the breath you had held.

The figure behind you watches you for a few seconds, and they stretch forward like an eternity. You wriggle, trying to close your legs again, but you can feel the wet lips of your pussy slipping against each other, feel how, in struggling to get free, you push your pussy back towards him, arching your back and pressing against the desktop. Behind you he makes a small humming sound, “mmmmm,” and you see his hands reach up to your ass, feel his thumbs spreading your pussy.

Then you feel the jingling of a belt, the sound of a zipper and you begin to sob, because _she_ must be back there, back there undoing his pants.

_Charlie. How could you do this to me? You knew I liked him. Why are you doing this?_

But then all thought is obliterated as you feel him, the tip of his cock sliding against your clitorus, teasing, then drawing back, slipping easily inside of you. You moan with pleasure and feel your pussy spasming, grasping at the hard cock that pushes into you, until you feel his hips pressing against your ass. You feel him grab your right ass cheek possessively as he presses into you hard, pushing you down against the firmness of the tabletop, and in spite of yourself you already begin to feel an orgasm mounting as he grinds you against the lip of the desk.

And then he’s drawing out again, twisting the swollen head of his cock that way that he does so that it rolls around inside of you, and you fight against the ropes that tie you down not so you can get away, but so that you can push against the desk, push your pussy onto him, hold him as best you can. You arch your back and look down at the students below, studying quietly, pushing your legs down against the floor to lift your hips for him, and then he’s driving into you again and your vision is swimming.

You can hear the figure beneath the desk, now, wet sounds of lapping and sucking that you can’t feel. _She’s pleasuring him._ you think. _Sucking on his balls ... while he fucks me._

_I don’t care,_ you think just as quickly, as he draws half out of you and then in again.

You feel giddy as his cock drives in and out of you, as you push your pussy onto him, gasping. You feel a hand leave the left cheek of your ass, snake up the side of your body, and in the half-reflection in the glass you see him hook his fingers into your slack mouth, forcing it open more, his fingers filling your mouth, and in spite of yourself you begin to suck on them, shuddering with pleasure at the wet sounds of sucking coming from beneath the desk.

 _It must be him,_ you think, _him and Charlie. She was fucking him and she knew I wanted him. That must be it. And I don’t care. I don’t care if he fucks her too_ you think, sucking on his fingers as his cock drives into you, deeper and deeper. You catch yourself beginning to wonder how it would feel to have his cock in your mouth, how he would taste when he came, and at the thought you feel your pussy clench again, and you feel yourself beginning to come. _I don’t care who else he fucks. As long as he fucks me too. As long as I’m_ **_his_**.

As you come you hear little feminine sounds of pleasure from beneath the desk, you hear the sucking sounds increase in intensity, and you sigh, twisting your hips on his cock as the pleasure spreads warm and sweet through your legs, as your orgasm stretches out.

And then a flash of motion down below, in the study hall, catches your eye. Someone walking into the room, three floors down. Not in a uniform. Wearing a subtle blue suit.

Fischer. He puts a hand on a desk and leans over a student’s drawings, murmuring something to them, something you cannot hear.

You let out a little cry of surprise and from behind you you hear a moan of satisfied pleasure, and as you watch Fischer, down below, you feel _him_ — **_some stranger_ **—coming inside of you.

“No no no,” you begin to whisper, your orgasm still flowing through you, the feel of his hot cum filling your pussy, creeping down your thigh.

“No,” you say a little louder and down below, Fisher yawns and looks up. His eyes catch yours and he gives you a look of surprised recognition. From down there, you must just look tired, lying down across the desk in the shadows.

He gives you a small smile, looking into your eyes, as cum pulses into you.

“No,” you whisper, beginning to cry. And down below, Fischer gives you a small nod and walks out.

\----------

_It was real._

There’s no doubt about it. You don’t remember how you got back, but when you woke up in your dorm you were wearing your ruined panties, and you could still feel his cum inside of you.

_Some stranger. And Charlie._

You remembered the pleasure of it and laid in bed for a long time, letting hot tears course down your cheeks.

_It wasn’t him._

But that was last night.

Last night had changed you. You walked down the open walkway between buildings, your stride confident, your heels clicking firmly with every step. The sun flashed across your clean white blouse.

_It doesn’t matter who it was in the library. It doesn’t matter who it was beneath Fischer’s desk. None of it matters._

You hold your notebook firmly at an angle to your hips. You step into the cafe with its enormous windows, its tables of glass. Professor Fischer is sitting at a table near the center of the room. He’s talking with another student, some man. You walk right past Charlie’s table without looking at her, and step up to Fischer’s.

“Professor Fischer?” your voice is firm, clear, more confident than you can ever remember.

He looks up over his glasses, the student he’s speaking with pausing mid-sentence. He looks surprised by you, somehow, but he smiles genuinely.

“Ah, Ariadne. What can I do for you?”

“I want to work with you,” you say, meeting the stare of his sharp blue eyes.

He smiles, slightly bemused, “Yes, well—”

“I’d like to meet with you,” you say. “To talk it over.”

He raises an eyebrow and leans back in his chair, looking at you in a new light. He nods, “Tomorrow. Three o’clock.”

“Thank you, sir,” you say firmly. You half-turn to walk away, “And, sir?”

You catch Fischer midway to turning back to the other student, and he looks a question at you.

“This time I won’t be late.”

\----------

_It doesn’t matter who it was_ you tell yourself, _and it doesn’t matter who she is._

You remember shaving, slowly and carefully. Remember the color of the pale skin of your pussy bare and exposed in the bathroom light.

_Because I’m going to show him that I_ **_am_** _his. Already._

You remember breaking into Charlie’s room. Finding her makeup box. Painting on the nail polish slowly, carefully, deliberately. The lavender shade you always thought looked so good. Remember looking in the mirror and thinking that it looked better on you.

_It doesn’t matter. Whether he understands or not. Because he’s already inside me. Even if he wasn’t the other nights._

You remember getting dressed in the uniform and feeling confident in it. You remember leaving off the panties. Feeling the thrill of the swish of the short skirt, just and inch below your ass. Knowing that those sharp blue eyes that never missed anything would see. Would see what’s his.

 _Because even if he hasn’t been inside me, he’s in my head. Everything he says. He_ **_understands_** _what I want to know. He sees what I want before I do. And then he says it. So it doesn’t matter._

And this time, you’re not in a rush. This time, you know where you’re going. You walk down the curve in the hallway, walk down to the end, to the frosted glass door in its brushed steel frame. Your watch tells you it’s 2:59. You smile and knock twice on his door, and from inside you hear his voice, “Come on in.”

\----------

The office is huge, just the way you remember it, and at the same time completely different.

_Because_ **_I’m_** _different._

The white stone semicircle of the walls bowling behind you, lined on either side with bookshelves, flaring out towards the tall.

Just like last time, the brilliant light of the high white sun glimmers in an empty blue sky. The simple blue, unmarked by clouds, above the bright green of the campus lawn ten stories below, marked by little white and charcoal dots, students milling about.

Just like last time, he’s framed by the light, sitting behind his huge black wooden desk, elbows thrust forward, fingers steepled together.

“Ariadne,” he says with a sharp smile. “Right on time.”

You smile back at him and walk across the office, heels _click click clicking_ until you stop just across the desk from him and half turn, looking down.

“So,” he says, leaning back in his black leather swivel chair, “You want to be my—”

“Yes, sir,” you say confidently. “I want to be yours.”

He chuckles a little and opens his right hand, a gesture of a question, “Tell me more.”

You clear your throat, “Professor Fischer, you understand dreams better than anyone I’ve met. I’m still processing things you said three lectures ago.”

He leans further back, holding your eyes and listening.

“But it’s more than just what you can give me. You can offer anyone in this school the same thing. No,” you say firmly, lifting your chin. “It’s more than that. Your lectures are working on me on a _subconscious_ level, tapping into something deep inside of me. The drawings I brought in here a week ago … I only half understand them myself. But you saw the kind of promise that they have. That’s you. That’s you _inside_ me,” you say, keeping your voice firm, even sharp over that. “Nobody else has that same kind of raw, untapped imagination. And nobody else understands you, even subconsciously, well enough to be formed by you.”

Fischer’s smile widens, and his eyes glitter as they watch yours, intently.

“Sir, whether you like it or not, I already am yours. Your student. Marked by you. Shaped by you. And if you take a firm hand with me,” you say, your voice confident, “I’ll do whatever it takes to be yours.”

Fischer taps his fingers together, letting his eyes run slowly over your body and then back up to your own, “And what, Ariadne, do you think it takes?”

You give him an assured half-smile, holding his gaze for a moment, and then you step confidently around his desk, taking big strides. He swivels to follow you, and you stand with your feet planted firmly apart for a moment. Then you lift your right foot first, slipping off your heeled shoe, and your left foot. You take a step closer, dropping to your knees between his legs, and put the shoes down carefully under his desk.

You look up at him, smiling, and he looks down at you, his blue eyes studying you carefully.

You snake your hands up his shins, “I think it takes hard work,” up his thighs, feeling the firmness of his legs beneath, “Devotion,” until you feel his cock, half-hard beneath your right hand. You wrap your fingers around him through his pants and give him a little squeeze, and he makes a sound of controlled pleasure, “Someone who understands what you want.” Reaching up, you undo his belt, unbutton his pants, slowly unzip them. You draw in a breath, feeling your mouth begin to water, your thighs begin to get damp.

You reach into his boxers and feel him, warm, and thick, soft and hard, and you slowly pull out his cock. You look at it for a moment, and then past his erection, heavy and firm in your hand, to his eyes, “Sir, I understand what you want.”

And, leaning forward, you open your mouth and trace the tip of your tongue up the bottom of his cock, savoring the taste of his skin, the smell of him, that mixed smell of his cologne with a tinge of sweat and sex. You lick all the way up his shaft to the swell of his head, pink and perfectly shaped, and at the tip you see a bead of clear liquid. Carefully, you lick the tip clean, and he draws in a controlled breath. A little trail of precum links his cock to your lips as you taste him, rich and complex, on your tongue. As you watch, more precum weeps from the tip of his cock and hungrily, you wrap your lips around his head and take him into your mouth.

You moan softly with pleasure as you suck him into your mouth, feeling him warm and heavy on your tongue, as you taste his precum coating your palette. You look up into his eyes, now glittering and hungry, and begin to suck on his shaft, pressing the back of your tongue to the base of his head, bobbing up and down. You draw your head up and back, twisting your lips around the shaft and holding his eyes, and when only his head is left in your mouth you messily play your tongue over the tip, enjoying the taste of his precum before slowly sucking him back into your mouth.

Closing your eyes, you begin to lose track of time, enjoying the delicious pleasure of his cock in your mouth, so much more than you ever would have thought, humming softly around his flesh with the joy of it.

And then you hear a sound. A timid knock on the door.

You’re about to pull back, but you feel his hand on the back of your head and look up into his eyes, startled. He holds you firmly onto him, petting his hands through your hair, and he lifts a single finger to his lips. “Shhh.”

Then he raises his hands and leans forward onto his desk, looking across the office, his cock still in your mouth.

“Come in,” he says, and his voice is controlled, no hint of what’s happening.

_How many people has he done this with before_ you wonder, feeling a twinge of fear rise up in you. _What if it’s_ **_her_** , _here for an “appointment”?_

“You’re late,” he says calmly, and, after a moment, “It doesn’t matter. Sit down.”

After a moment you hear hesitant heeled footsteps cross the room, hear the creak of one of the chairs across his desk.

_She’s only a few feet away from me._

Fischer swivels very slightly in his chair, and he slips the smooth toe of his shoe between your knees, gently begins to raise it along the inside of your thigh. You shudder, feeling yourself drooling on his cock, and you squeeze your eyes shut.

“It looks like you brought something,” he says to the person across the desk from him. You hear a shuffling of papers, and feel Fischer lean over them, inspecting them.

_I can’t believe he’s so in control,_ you think, _so powerful that he doesn’t let anything on._

The tip of his shoe, smooth and warm from the sun, gently brushes against your exposed pussy beneath the skirt, and it takes all of your self control not to cry out.

“Well,” he says, pausing, “it’s a start.”

“Thank you, Professor—” says a voice.

And your world reels. You let out a little muffled sound of surprise and your eyes look around wildly.

_That’s … that’s_ **_my_** _voice. Is that my voice?_

“Yes, you were saying?” Fischer goads above you.

“I … I worked on these sketches based on what you were talking about,” you hear yourself say clearly above, and the memory of the meeting, last week, in this office clicks into place.

_It was me. It was me under the desk. I_ **_am_** _her._

You feel the toe of Fischer’s shoe press firmly up against your pussy, and your body trembles, and you begin to come. You moan softly, letting the sound of your orgasm flow out of you around Fischer’s cock and begin slurping greedily as you feel your wetness slick the toe of his shoe.

“I-I-I’m sorry, Professor,” you hear yourself say, “I didn’t realize. I’m sorry I came late. I’ll go!”

“Ariadne,” Fischer says, and his eyes glance briefly down at you, and he winks, before glancing back across the office at you, “You don’t have to go.”

And you feel the second orgasm wash over you, and you moan deep and uninhibited over his cock as you feel him begin to pulse inside of you, taste his cum filling up your mouth, too much to hold, and he sighs with satisfaction as you hear the door close, and he leans back, looking down at you and smiling.

You slowly pull your face off his still-hard cock, cum dribbling down your chin, and you lean against his legs, involuntary shudders of pleasure wracking your body as you pant.

He puts a hand in your hair, petting you softly.

“Oh Ariadne,” he says affectionately, “the thing is that you _don’t_ understand what I want. Not yet. But you’ve got plenty of time to learn. I thought … ” and here he pauses with a smile. “You see I thought … we’d start with _your own pleasure._ ”

\----------

“It’s not _just_ a dream,” Fischer tells you as you kneel at his feet, looming over you in his office chair. You look up at him, for a moment almost having forgotten what you did, what you came there to do. And then you notice his cock again, half-hard still, lying across his pants in front of you.

You blush fiercely at that, start to look away, but he snakes his fingers in your hair, grasping firmly, holding your gaze on his cock, _I can’t believe I just took him in my mouth_ , and past that his sharp blue eyes. You swallow, still tasting him on your tongue, and gasp a little.

“What do you mean … sir?”

He smiles down at you then, slowly and carefully.

“It’s a test.”

“A test?”

“Yes,” he says carefully. He holds your gaze for a moment and then, still holding your hair, but more gently now, he leans forward. His cock slips towards your face, the head brushing against your lips. You blush, somehow made shy by the knowledge that you were dreaming together. Fischer lifts a piece of architectural paper off his desk, looking at it carefully, and you purse your lips against the head of his cock, unsure of what to do as he studies it, holding your head firmly against his lap. Then he’d leaned back, and his cock slips back from your lips, like a kiss. He holds the paper so that you can see.

They're your drawings. From the first time you’d come to his office.

_Was it the first time? Or was_ **_this_** _the first time, since technically you had arrived before yourself?_

“These aren’t bad, Ariadne,” he says. He pauses then, waiting for you to be able to really bring your attention to the drawings.

You open your mouth to speak, but he interrupts you. “What’s she chasing? Why is she following herself?”

That brings you up short. You close your mouth slowly, and thought.

“This is a test,” he says. “You wanted to work with me, and I wanted to see what that meant, what it meant to you deeply. So I made a dream for you about working with me, let you fill in the blanks. Let you … express yourself.”

“What do you mean … express myself, sir?” you ask. And in response, he smiles.

“Why don’t you show yourself, Ariadne?”

You look up at him, eyes clear and wide.

“Look in the desk drawer,” he says, nodding to the drawer by your shoulder.

You look over as his fingers slip out of your hair. You reach out, gently, opening the drawer. Your eyes widen when you see what was inside, and you look back up to him.

Smiling gently, he nods. “Go ahead, Ariadne.”

Slowly, you reach inside, and with a small jingling bring out what lay in the drawer.

Fischer looks down at you, smiling as you looked at what lay in your hand, half shy, half embarrassed. “Let’s go for a walk.”

\----------

Fischer led you then, out of his office, through a side door you had never really noticed before, into a darkness filled with warm steam, your feet padding suddenly soft on tile. He smiles gently at your surprise, nods down through the darkness. After a moment’s disorientation, you recognize it. The women’s locker room. At night. A moment’s understanding dawns across you, and you look up to Fischer, open your mouth, but he smiles and puts his finger to your lips. He nods down the hallway and you follow his gaze, to the only stall in the gym that was occupied. Steam still poured from it, and from the side you see her—no, see _you_ —looking at yourself in a steam-choked mirror, posing, looking … dissatisfied.

You look down into your hands. A pair of purple leather cuffs, unclasped from one another, linkable with a steel clasp between. In your own hands. With nails painted lavender. You look back to Fischer and, with a small smile, he nods encouragingly to you.

It had felt so strange to walk down that hallway towards yourself. Some mixture of _deja vu_ and vertigo. But you felt drawn. You watch yourself watch yourself in the mirror. Frustrated by your attempts to look domineering, aggressively sexual. And then Fischer reaches out for you—for the you from before—and closes his firm hand around your mouth. And you felt a slickness wetting between your legs as you remember your wetness when he—yes, it _had_ been him, had _always_ been him—when **_he_ ** had touched you.

You reach out to help him, half in a daze, latching your own arms up over the showerhead. You watch, shuddering, his hands slipping over your body, cringe at every gasp and moan from yourself, feeling all over again the electric warmth of his touch over your body _now_ in the memory of it from _before_. Receding into the shadows, you watch his cock stiffen as his hands grasp your body, watched your body go limp and your legs fall open … feel your own legs fall open as you slide down to the floor and instinctively, as you watch the tip of his cock push gently into you, you slip your finger between the lips of your wet pussy, stifling a gasp as he slides inside of you and you slide inside yourself.

You watch him, fucking yourself as you he fucks you, slipping your finger gently over your clit as he reaches his hand around and does the same to you, mirroring every moan of your former self with a tensing of your thighs—and when she comes, thighs flexing as her pussy grasps desperately at his cock, as his cum pulses into her and down her leg—you come, biting the back of your fist to keep from crying out.

As she slumps, spent, you watch Fischer withdraw from her, from you, watch her fade into the shadows as he steps forward over you. Blushing, somehow still shy, you pull your skirt down over your pussy and he smiles down at you. Above, his cock still welled up, white and slick. You feel a warm drip on your cheek and, blushing more furiously, gaze up at him adoringly.

\----------

Fischer walks down a hallway, alternately dark and light, the same smooth white stone of the dream school you’d inhabited for … well, you didn’t really know how long, now.

“You see, Ariadne,” he says, not looking over his shoulder, confident that you walked at his side, just behind him, past labyrinthine doors that led through impossible architecture, to where you knew not, “Working with dreams, _learning_ to work with them, isn’t so straightforward. You’d been taught some very misleading things about dreams, by people who didn’t really understand them.”

“You mean … other teachers?”

You see the side of his smile as he walks, and he looks over at you for a moment, holding your eyes not unkindly, but with a firm prompt. _Think._

You flush a little, suddenly more aware of the cool air beneath your short skirt, your nakedness just below the surface. You swallow, and nod, “Of course, sir … there is no school.”

He looks back to where he was going then, “That’s right. Novices and crass dream artists rely too much on surroundings that are familiar, that seem normal or mundane to the dreamer, thinking to trick the dreamer into a sense of security, of wakefulness. But that’s not how dreams work. The mind is accepting of a great deal when you’re dreaming, Ariadne, and the more evocative the surroundings, the deeper you can see into the psyche of the dreamer.”

_Of course. This was an impossible school. A modern architect’s dream of a school, exquisite, modern, gorgeous. It would have cost more money than Harvard or Oxford had to build such a school. And how old were you supposed to be? This was some mix of a prep school and a college …_

“So … a school because?”

“Because it’s about mentorship. It’s a place of vulnerability and openness, and stress. Because it’s a charged space, a space where a person feels partially unformed, and thus, the myriad possibilities of who they are have some chance to express themselves. Some people express wild dreams of career and ambition in a setting like this. Others get lost in the stress of the dream, or focus on achievement and mastery. But for many,” Fischer shrugs slightly, smiling again, but not looking at you as he walks through a pool of light in the hallway, “it’s a sexually-charged space. Mentorship, learning, tutelage … it can be a highly erotic space, and through sexuality one discovers something deep about themselves.”

You flush again. _Was this what I wanted? Did_ **_I_** _make this dream so sexual?_

“How … how do you know what part of this is me? What part of this is … is you?” you ask him, and he pauses, stepped slightly to the side in a pool of darkness in the corridor.

“What happened in the showers,” Fischer said, his eyes holding you firmly, and you again feel yourself blushing, grateful for the darkness of this span of the hall. “What happened there … I only experienced once, just now, when you locked yourself up. _After_ you locked yourself up.”

You swallow in the darkness, feeling warmth between your legs again, pressing your thighs together uncertainly.

After holding your gaze for a moment, he reaches out and opens a door in the hallway. It moves on silent hinges, dark beyond.

“Listen, Ariadne. You can leave this hallway through any door you like. What you do next is up to you. But I think you’re chasing something. Trying to figure something out. About yourself. About your creativity. About your potential, and how it’s linked to your relationship with … older men. With mentors. Maybe even with _me_ in particular. But I can’t push you into this. This is something you’ll do or not. Figure out, or leave behind you.”

He shrugs slightly, and, turning, walks down the hallway, leaving the dark doorway open before you.

You pause, then, half unsure. _What if this isn’t really what I want? What if this is just some fantasy?_ It went against everything you thought you knew, some instinct from your waking life, about women and men, about power dynamics, about obsequiousness and submissiveness and empowerment. You could almost feel the judgmental eyes of friends, difficult to remember in this dream state, of parents, of strangers, looking at what you had done, the way you’d gotten on your knees for Fischer, the way you’d helped him … to _rape_ you.

_But no one is here to see me. No one. And I_ **_liked_** _it. When he fucked me. When he used me. Nobody can see me. It’s just a dream. A secret._

As you thought, you feel yourself getting wetter, slick between your thighs. You look into the doorway and walk through it.

Inside, it's quiet and dark. Your bare feet half-stumble against a stairway, soft and warm, leading up. You reach out for a handrail and your fingertips pause on something silky. With touch alone you explore the object, pick them up off the handrail, feel two long, smooth ropes in your hands.

You take in a sudden small breath, half-shuddering. And slowly, you make your way up the stairs.

Step by step you pad silently until you can see a bare light at the head of the stairway. You hurry your pace then, and all of a sudden your head comes up from the narrow hall of the stairway in a meager light. Disoriented, you look around for a moment.

The stairway ends in a simple square hole in a floor, and above you you can see a low roof—no, the underside of a desk. Beyond the legs of the desk, shelves of books in dim light, and in front of you a pair of crossed legs. _Your_ legs.

You nod to yourself, smiling secretly. Watch yourself as you tap your foot impatient and frustrated with whatever was on the desk. Watch yourself stand, spreading your legs to stretch, and then lean forward. Looking behind you, at the other edge of the desk, you see it. Your fingers gripping the edge.

You take a step up, then, and reaching behind the desk, grab your own wrists firmly. You feel yourself tense in your own grip, struggle and cry out, and the excitement of it sends a wave of warmth down your whole body.

“Charlie … ” you hear yourself say through the desk. “Why?”

You bite your lip, stifling a little cry of your own, a cry of pleasure, and looking back towards your legs under the desk, you see his feet, striding confidently forward, coming up behind those legs, spread wide, tensed in alarm. When he stops just behind her— _your_ legs you can see him hard through his slacks, his cock almost brushing against you and, suddenly, the desk tremors just slightly, giving the softest creak as you feel him pushing you down from above, holding you firmly, interminably, down.

Smiling, you let go of your left hand, watch as you move to withdraw it from above, and feel the force of him pressing you down— _a warning_ —onto the desk more firmly. You watch your hand relax, then, hanging gently with resignation over the end of the desk, and the feeling of pleasure in your body begins to mount as you tie first your right hand, and then your left to the desk. The ropes tighten as you give a half-hearted struggle, but you lean forward now, watching from between your legs as Fischer reaches down and lifts the back of your skirt. You can see that your panties are already so wet, and through your legs you see Fischer looking down at you, smiling. He gives a little sigh of pleasure, and then, as he hooks his finger through your panties you see your thighs trembling and feel your own thighs, now, trembling in response, and you lean against the opening in the floor to steady yourself.

You watch him then, as he cuts away your panties, as you squirm and wriggle uselessly against the desk, pushing your pussy out towards him as he hums appreciatively, watch him put his hands on your ass and gently spread you open with his thumbs. And you find that you can’t take it anymore. You lean forward, reaching between your spread legs, fumbling for his belt, unclasping it, pulling at the button and the zipper of his pants while he smiles down at you. You reach inside his pants and his boxers and feel him warm and firm and thick in your hand, already so hard, and when you pull out his cock you feel a little pulse of pleasure between your legs. You reach in with your other hand, scooping out his balls, staring up at him for a moment before you guide his cock forward, pressing the tip of it against your clitorus above you, watching a tremor run through you, and then, drawing his cock slowly and deliciously back, push it into your hot, wet pussy, and the moan from your past self, from above, seems to vibrate the whole of the desk.

You watch him fuck you, then, watch yourself push against his cock so eagerly as he drives in and out of you, watch his cock slide and twist inside of you and, half-hiding in the shadows, shy beneath the eyes that peer between your legs into your own, you touch yourself beneath your skirt and pleasure clouds your vision.

 _This_ **_is_** _me_ , you think desperately. _There’s something here I have to know._

You watch him fuck you for a moment, and then, half-timidly climb up again, reaching out your tongue for his balls, tasting the subtle flavor of his sweat mixed with your own wetness, and when he nods his encouragement you close your eyes and suck one of his balls into your mouth, slurping and licking as he fucks you, letting your finger play gently over your clit as you grip the lip of the floor for support with your other hand.

He fucks you hard, then, and your orgasms begin to rise together, you pressing your clitorus now while you suck greedily on his balls, his cock driving deep inside of you before. And before long, the trembling of the legs to either side of you, the twisting of your hips around his cock, show you that you’re coming and you moan with your mouth full of him as you come too, sucking desperately on his balls, your nostrils flaring.

And then, as you come, you see your body change, see yourself tense a little.

_When I saw him. Below._

Above you, you hear yourself say, “No,” but Fischer doesn’t stop. He holds your eyes, looking at you intently. You look up to him, your mouth open as you release his balls. Slowly, you nod to him.

“No no no,” you hear yourself whimper above, desperate, resigned. But you nod up at him, and watch as he drives himself all the way into you, see his own body spasm with pleasure, watch his cum well out from your pussy and down your thigh.

“No,” you hear yourself cry above, with a whimper, but you keep nodding, half hidden again in the shadows, half ashamed of yourself as you watch him cum inside of you, filling you up against your will. “No.”

But below, in the shadows, you mouth the word— _Yes._

\----------

You don’t know how much time passed before you find yourself back in his office. Standing there, shy and confused with yourself, hands clasped behind your back. He sits in his chair, fingers gently steepled, and on his desk is one of those devices. For sharing dreams.

“You’ve come a long way, Ariadne,” he says.

In spite of your shyness, your confusion, you nod. “Yes, sir.”

“But we’ve only scratched the surface.”

You swallow a lump in your throat, and nod again. “I think that’s true, sir.”

“The question is … do you want to continue?”

You don’t hesitate. Even though you blush, you nod. “Yes, sir. I think—I think I have to, sir.”

He smiles at that. Leans back in his chair. Casually, he unzips his pants, and lays his cock, half-hard, in his lap. Your eyes flicker down, but then you look up into his face again, blushing, squeezing your legs together.

“Come sit on my lap, Ariadne.”

You open your mouth, as if to protest, acutely aware that you're naked below your skirt but then close it, nod. “Yes, sir.”

You walk around his desk, and move to sit sideways over his lap, hoping to hook your knees together over his thighs, but with a subtle motion of his hand he gestures your legs apart, and as you lower yourself onto him you felt the tip of him slipping against your wet lips, growing harder and larger, pressing at you. You pause, unable to maneuver his cock out of the way, holding your weight off his lap.

He leans forward, then, his lips against your ear. “I said _sit_.”

You swallow again, and as he draws back from your ear you see his eyes, firm, clear. “Yes, sir,” you whisper.

With a tiny, shuddering squeak, you obey, then, letting your weight pull you down, feeling your pussy open around the head of his cock, slipping over and around him. You try to squeeze your thighs shut, but only succeed in holding yourself tight around him, feeling yourself full of him.

“This has only been the beginning, Ariadne,” he says, looking into your eyes. You squirmed under that gaze, but the squirming makes him shift inside of you, sends a shudder of pleasure up your body, and you nod.

“Yes, sir.”

He reaches forward, bringing the attachments for the dream machine from his desk, hooking them onto your arm, onto his arm.

“This will be … more intense,” he says, rocking his hips back just a touch, so that the head of his cock presses against the flesh inside of you, behind your clitorus, and you feel a wave of wetness spilling out from you, onto him.

“Y-yes, sir,” you manage to say softly.

He presses a button on the machine on the desk, and it softly whirs to life, and he smiles, reaching into an inner pocket of his blazer. He draws out a small piece of jewelry, tasteful and simple, a black choker with a little silver emblem at the throat. A fish, twisting in the water, eyes bright.

You gasp softly, leaning back, pressing his cock against your g-spot, giving a tiny moan, and he leans forward, fastening the choker closed around your neck.

“Let’s see how deep,” he says, as the world around you begins to fade into drowsy blackness, “this goes.”

\----------


End file.
